Last week, my mom texted our family group chat that her younger brother was undergoing emergency surgery to remove a malignant brain tumor. This week, we found out it was stage four brain cancer, and aggressive. While this would be devastating news for any family, it is even more shocking for us, as this particular uncle of mine is the exact middle child of 13 siblings who have heretofore appeared to be untouchable.

john lynn david ann becky jill kelly beth chris elaine amy shannon dana

With that many births, it’s statistically unlikely that every child in my mother’s immediate family has lived beyond the age of 50 and continues to do so with the eldest nearing 80. Countless families experience either the loss of a child or the birth of a child with a significant disability, and my grandmother somehow gave birth to 13 completely healthy babies without complications. This, along with the fact that they all managed to stay alive and unmaimed throughout their childhoods, strikes me as miraculous. 

In their later years, they’ve had their share of health problems, including cancer, but they all remain vital. To give just one example, david survived a horrific motorcycle accident and later barely escaped the 2011 tornado that destroyed a massive swath of Joplin, MO. He walks with a cane now, but he’s still as happy as ever to call you a sumbitch and share a raspy laugh over a can of Busch. We have become accustomed to believing that they are eternal.

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I recently watched a video in which a church-goer was defying pandemic social distancing protocol by attending a service with many of her fellow parishioners. Her response to the reporter’s questions about why she might be choosing to do that when it could quickly spread coronavirus among many more people, including her own family, was that she was not interested in considering such things because, “I’m covered in Jesus’ blood. I’m covered in Jesus’ blood.” She later clarified, when asked about her elevated potential to infect the people she would inevitably encounter while out in the world, “They could get me sick, but they’re not because I’m covered in his blood.” 

This is an insane thing for any person to say, but as I heard it, I began to wonder if any of the 13 have developed a similar private mythology. If I belonged to such an apparently charmed group of people, I might be inclined to think we were benefiting from divine intervention. What magic blood is covering the Murrays and is some of it covering me? Is it diluted because I’m only half Murray? Am I as crazy as the woman covered in Jesus’ blood?

Each time there is an update on his progress, I am filled with dread, and then immediately optimistic. I realize my optimism is based solely on the unexplained protection the 13 have enjoyed for so many decades. My assumption that Kelly will make a full recovery is a given, since “full recovery” has been the Murray standard my entire life. The thought of him relying on the use of a wheelchair or being unable to speak is as foreign to me as the thought of him ceasing to be. It is time to recalibrate my understanding of mortality as it pertains to the people I love.

Kelly is younger than my mom, number seven to her number six. She helped to almost kill him when they were kids when she oversaw his massive overdose of aspirin. Thankfully, his stomach was pumped in time. She treasures him, as does my aunt Beth (number eight) who followed both of them around while she was learning how to be a person. Beth and my mom are so close that mom calls me Beth more often than she calls me Becca. It’s easy for me to forget that Kelly is the filling that makes their sibling sandwich complete, since his visits don’t often overlap with mine, but he is their brother. With only four boys scattered among the nine girls, I perceive that the girls have divvied them up: there is a youngest brother, a middle brother, and the older brothers. Kelly, as the middle brother, belongs to them. I’m afraid of the effects anything other than a full recovery will have on my mom and Beth.

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I woke up at 6:45am today, a Saturday, to videochat with my best friends from high school. We digitally convened for the first time in years as a distant support group. Jill’s dad has cancer and is reaching the end. There is so little to say other than that we love her, so except for some very somber moments, it could have been a normal chat to an outside observer. I haven’t seen her dad in 11 years. How can I tell her that the prospect of her father’s death opens a chasm in me, that I don’t understand how she will continue to live after he is gone, or that I can’t fathom how anyone successfully gives or receives comfort in the face of an immediate family member’s premature death? If we are born to die, how can I have lived so many years and be unprepared?

With my own life untouched by death, I can easily remember moments when my peers’ were. I learned in eighth grade that a schoolmate’s mother had died years before, which seemed impossible to me, since that loss didn’t seem to define every part of her personality. When I was a senior in high school, a fellow member of the drama club lost her mother, and the entire school mourned with her. The memorial mass felt like an out of body experience, as I knew that the logical reaction to your mother’s death would be to shatter into a million pieces, but my friend managed to walk and sit and stand as if she was still alive. Two years later, one of my best friends learned that his father took his own life; shortly after that, he would learn that his mother had an aggressive form of cancer. She passed away a few years after we graduated from college, and he became an orphan trying to execute an estate from 3,000 miles away. In the last year, more high school friends have lost parents: two very suddenly and one after a long illness. Witnessing their grief by way of my phone’s screen makes me feel like a cork bobbing in a lake. I am gripped by a selfish terror. What if my own parents prove their mortality before I am grey and wizened?

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My aunt uploaded a grainy, silent video showing Kelly ringing the bell that signals the completion of his first round of radiation therapy. The terrible resolution and lack of sound gave it an underwater quality, like I was watching my uncle perform our collective dream. Beth had originally introduced the idea of focusing our thoughts on visualizing Kelly recovering, putting in our minds’ eyes a picture of him regaining full health, walking out of the hospital as if there were no such thing as brain tumors. He was in a wheelchair in the video, but we can hold this as evidence that wishing works. Maybe if we wish a bit more earnestly, our next dream will be heavier on the detail. If anyone can run a 4k prayer circle, will it be the Murrays? 

Kelly will start chemotherapy soon, which will compromise his immune system. As states begin the process of removing stay at home orders, much of the country is preparing for a second wave of Covid cases and hospitalizations. The uncertainty of the coming months has put us on edge, and is eroding our confidence in the Murray exceptionalism. We are approaching 80,000 Covid-related deaths nationwide, so the phrase, “no one is safe,” definitely comes to mind. The thought of Kelly making progress against his cancer with chemotherapy and then contracting coronavirus drags the pit of my stomach all the way to the floor. 

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So much time has passed since I last visited this topic that Kelly has now been beyond us for more than a month and Covid-related deaths in the US are nearing 300,000. Thankfully, he was spared a Covid complication, but everything that happens during this lost year seems like yet another piece of unreality that cannot be processed. All of his siblings were there for his memorial, along with his more local nieces and nephews. Accepting that they are no longer 13 after more than 50 years must be difficult, but their joy in being together after more than a year apart suffused the grief of his passing with a buoyancy that must make anything seem bearable. In this way, they will always be exceptional.

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